Cardiac Incineration
by The Beautiful Filth
Summary: Post-TRF. Moriarty had said he would burn the heart out of him, but he made a mistake. John/Sherlock friendship, sibling rivalry, Sherlolly if you squint. T for mentions of torture. Oneshot. Complete.


**It's (a bit) too late for a post-TRF fic, but this plot bunny is hopping around like crazy and it doesn't stop even after I've fed it carrots. Everything (kind of) hit me when I was staying up till 1am because I drank a cup of strong tea before dinner (and if you ever want to be able to sleep before midnight, seriously, forego the tea)... **

**Hope you enjoy this!**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Sherlock.**

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This, undoubtedly, was _Very Not Good_ in John's books. Even in Sherlock's perception, this would register as _A Bit Not Good._

It was the most serious injury Sherlock encountered ever since he started his quest to destroy Moriarty's network in June, 2012. His right femur was fractured, and an angry purple bruise was starting to form around the fracture where he was hit repeatedly with a plank. The purple oddly resembled the burgundy dress shirts he had worn frequently before he was proclaimed dead legally, and the whiteness of the alabaster skin around the bruise looked even paler in comparison.

Not to mention his disguise was completely torn and ruined.

His bleeding limbs were covered in furious red marks, courtesy of a whip made from tree bark. He couldn't be sure of the precise type of weapon, for he was half-drugged and blindfolded before the torture started; but his willpower beat the tranquilizer and he felt the beating.

_Everything_.

The middle-aged Estonian man of Israeli descent beat him with a wooden plank, which left splints on his thighs but didn't draw any blood. His accomplice, highly likely to be Israelites from their accent, proceeded to hit him all over with a whip. He wasn't certain of the pricking sensation and the wetness of his skin, but it felt so, so real; and the sporadic lifting of one square inch of his pierced skin pointed at only one possibility: hooks were attached on the bloody whip.

The wooden plank, the hooked whip —

Suddenly, everything made sense. His knowledge of the Bible was rusty, but the lectures during Sunday School were inexplicably locked away in a dusty room of his mind palace. Why they would strike him with a whip that was used to strike Jesus he had no idea, but the thought was downright ironic yet hilarious.

The searing pain in his right thigh made him groan in pain. Gritting his teeth, he extended his right leg, but the jolt of burning sensation brought moisture to his eyes.

He hadn't felt such pain before. The pain this time rivaled a similar sensation experienced when he was a child, after breaking his tibia from a fall from the tree.

_Why would every injury he experience be related to a fall of some sort?_

An unpleasant indigo, almost black, hue spread from the mauve. He was certain that it wasn't merely a fracture - his femur was crushed and he required immediate medical attention.

_Not Good,_ definitely.

In spite of the severity of his injury, Sherlock Holmes chuckled. The irony was hilarious. There he was, curled up in pain after being treated like a bloody martyr, yet his fake death did save John, Molly Hooper, Lestrade, Mrs. Hudson; and nevertheless, his invincible brother. Donovan and Anderson were Judas Iscariot, but he was no Jesus and there was no Peter. There was absolutely _no_ Mary Magdalene either. There was only one scapegoat for all the crimes committed - and the lamb was framed for the lion's monstrous felonies.

He was alone. There was no John to back him up in the field, no Molly to assist him in the cadavers and experiments.

The thought itself made him raise his good leg — the left one — and jam it into an assailant's shin. Sherlock's body, with the aid of his arms, shot up from the impact, and he found himself grinding his left foot into the assailant's right tibia and fibula, possibly dislocating his knee joint. It would hurt for more than a week, and judging from the pained expression on the man's face, the Consulting Detective very likely exerted at least nine hundred newtons of force onto the Estonian's shin.

Swiftly he pulled out a pistol from a hidden holster next to his left femur — thanking whoever out there that it wasn't damaged - and emptied two cartridges clean into the assailant's heart. Bending down and muttering curses as the pain in his thigh intensified, he leaned into the Estonian's face, and spoke with a cold glare.

"That's for threatening my —"

Sherlock gulped and picked his next words.

"— My friends, _moron_."

He hopped off the deceased man's body, and hobbled into a hidden compartment a block away from the warehouse where the torture took place.

Everything was pitch dark.

The room was furnished in black wallpaper, with the pattern on it looking alarmingly like a series of superimposing smiley faces in dark gray. It had been his hideout for the past two months, when he spent much time planning, observing, and _plotting_. He didn't trust his brother dearest to the task, but he would only admit it was solely imputed to the fact that only he, Sherlock Holmes, could handle the legwork without anything remotely resembling a grumble.

He bit his lips in an attempt to distract himself from the searing pain in his right thigh. Snatching the first-aid box from the only cabinet in the room, he flung himself on the couch like how he used to do.

But there was no John staring at him with a chiding glint in his eyes, no Mrs. Hudson fussing over him and making him tea, and no Billy blankly looking at the yellow smiley face.

He had never felt like he was drowning in solitude before.

It was natural for him to feel alone — a reasonable and logical occurrence, even. He had faked his death with the assistance of Molly (and Mycroft, he begrudgingly acknowledged), so as to tear down Moriarty's infamous network and keep John, Molly and everyone else safe.

John was the first person to ever admire and respect his work. Instead of telling the Consulting Detective to piss off, he stayed, and even shot Jeff Hope to save him. Sherlock didn't have friends — only one.

And the man whom he called his friend was broken.

He had seen John from afar in his own funeral, and _goodness_, grief didn't suit him _at all_. He had an urge to speak at a normal volume, just to give the blogger a tinge of hope that he was still alive; but he decided against it. He would have died ten times over again if it meant saving his only friend.

_Molly_...

Molly Hooper was different. She was intelligent, kind and caring — everything that The Woman was not.

He shook his head.

He reminded himself that the female race wasn't to be trusted, that they were inferior, that they were manipulative.

Little did he expect to find difficulty in convincing himself of that.

The crushed look on her face when she knew Jim - or Moriarty - was gay, the hurt expression marring her countenance when he insulted her at Christmas, her dedication to pathology; every emotion she showed was authentic. They were genuine, and he couldn't find it in him to doubt her.

_You, Molly Hooper. You count._

He longed to say these words to her, he longed to tell her that she, as well as John, Lestrade and Mrs. Hudson, does count in his life. The problem was that he had to take down the rest of Moriarty's network before he could properly apologize to his pathologist.

There was a possibility that he could be too late, but —

Someone gasped.

Sherlock turned around, but nobody was there.

_No, _he thought. _My Mind Palace is creating a hallucination to brighten my spirits._

He delved into his Mind Palace, and sought the owner of the voice which produced the gasp.

This time, he didn't hold back the startled gasp. Sherlock had felt nothing like this before —the pain he felt earlier couldn't be compared at all to the frequent electrocution of his cardiac muscles. It was as if ounces of nitroglycerin mysteriously lodged itself in the pericardium, readily decomposing under the warmth of his blood and the presence of water in the pericardial fluid.

His heart was _burning_.

Moriarty had said he'd burn the heart out of him, but he made a mistake. The vital organ in his cardiovascular system didn't leave his body at all, yet it was combusting as if it was a raging inferno.

He was suffocating in the flames.

Sentiment was a flaw, a chemical defect in his scientific brain; yet he couldn't help but feel overwhelmed by the emotions pulsating in his veins. His nemesis - or rather, his brother - was a man of utilitarian principle, not hesitating to sell information to Moriarty in order to make him confess, make him talk; and in return, sacrificing his brother, his own flesh and blood.

Molly, not knowing the extent of the predicament he was in, still willingly helped him even when he hinted that he was a fake, a fraud who invented Moriarty and used Richard Brook as a dummy in his games. She was the one who truly saw him; and even though she said that she didn't count, Sherlock knew that she had counted all along - before John, before Mrs. Hudson, before Lestrade.

He was the moron, the one who looked at displays of emotions but never truly saw them. Molly _saw_ him for what he truly was, rather than picking apart others' brains and intelligence on purpose. She saw him without the Belstaff coat shielding himself from others' privy eyes, yet she never blatantly exhibited her discernment of human sentiments.

Who, ultimately, was the smartest - Sherlock, or Molly? Who caused flames to erupt within his pericardium, however anatomically impossible it was?

His untraceable mobile buzzed, revealing a text from Mycroft.

_Everything taken care of. -MH_

Sherlock snorted, and punched the unfamiliar keypad of the phone.

_Loathing to confront your younger brother? -SH_

_Apologies. - MH_

_Bullshit. -SH_

_You don't care. -SH_

_I do. I apologize. -MH_

_Give me a reason. Don't be dull. -SH_

_You're my brother. -MH_

The curt text was promptly received, and Sherlock stared at it for four minutes and twenty-three seconds before he sent a reply.

_You said sentiment was a weakness. -SH_

The Consulting Detective returned his attention to his throbbing femur, which he proceeded to ice and brace. One hour passed before he was done, and he checked his phone afterwards.

There were no new messages.

_So the iceman is speechless? _He gave a humorless chuckle, thrust the phone onto the far end of the couch and tended to his other wounds with skilled fingers.

Yet nothing could smother the cardiac incineration raging inside.


End file.
